


how time advances

by seventeencrows



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alcohol, and kepler makes for a terrible agony aunt, come one come all, eiffel has a funhouse mirror for a noggin, spoilers through the 9/11 mini-ep, watch me spin relationships that totally weren't there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 09:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventeencrows/pseuds/seventeencrows
Summary: it is safe to say that you, douglas ferdinand eiffel, are scared out of your goddamn mind.





	how time advances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gortysproject](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gortysproject/gifts).



> “idk if u saw my comment but honestly i'd sell my soul and maybe some pretty jewelry to see u write second-person eiffel again someday...i commission u just to tell me how much eiffel hates himself”
> 
> i'm nothing if not a crow enticed by shiny things and pretty words from sweet people

you’re starting to make a list, now.

it’s probably for the best, probably easiest this way; no one likes to have a notepad of their own worst qualities burning a hole in their pocket but you, you think that it’s the only way you’ll really ever learn. always been more of a walking on razor blades than eggshells sort of person because it’s never really mattered when it’s just you on that edge, has it? you’ve never had all that much to lose but it’s a different game now, now that you know, now that they’ve told you just how terrible a person you really are as if you couldn’t have guessed—

but.

your list.

it started out as a joke because that’s just how it goes with you, that’s how everything starts—a laugh, a game; _gosh, wouldn’t it be funny if i—_ but when you ask hera for help, for examples of all the shitty things you’ve ever said to the one person up here who’s always had your back, had their eye on you, you find out she’s got a list of her own. and it’s long, doug, and annotated and time-stamped and you crack a grin when minkowski call it _admirable,_ that you’re trying to _do things by the book_ and that, _you_ , with a suit all starched and your shoulders all shiny, now that’s a real G.I. Joke—

although, that’s what you _were,_ isn’t it? a military man—why’d you join up in the first place? wanted to? had to? did you just want the _adventure_ of it, anything to get you out of this same-faced town and its same-faced people with that way they always _looked_ at you? were you going to get home a hero? someone who made something of himself? there’s no adventure rushing towards you now but a car with the student body president and his brother in it and let's be real, eiffel, you were never getting home to see your friends and family and the three good arnold schwarzenegger movies anyway. in the holding cell that morning with the too friendly man and his too wide smile and the too bitter coffee, you knew this was a one-way trip. deep down, you knew he was sending you the only place you deserved to go.

but _fuck,_ did it feel good to pretend otherwise? it’s just like a scene from the movies, isn’t it? rugged hero led astray, fallen on hard times but _wait—_ a last chance, a redemption, a happy ending and you thought for one second that you were special, that cutter needed you specifically, that you were the only man for the job, and—

and, well, you were right.

you’re the only man because you’re the leftover man, the last man last choice bottom of the shoe of the barrel and who _cares?_ not you, certainly, not anymore, not since you snap awake at night to your daughter’s xylophone playing off-key in your ears, to kate’s face reflected back at you in the windows, the same way she’d looked from across the courtroom—

(the cops booked you the moment the doctor signed your release and didn’t look at you twice before she left, out the door and up the stairs to the next patient and she was _right upstairs,_ doug, anne was _right there_ and you didn’t even try, you didn’t even check on her or ask how she was doing or whether or not she was still alive because you were _scared.)_

but that’s how it always was—neither of you knew what you were doing but kate _stepped up,_ kate was a mother and you were a monster and she _saw you,_ she knew you best after all those years and all she wanted to do was keep your kid safe, even if it was from you, even if it was by keeping her as far away (miles? light years?) as possible. and you just couldn’t have that.

there’s always someone, isn’t there, to give you an out? to bite the bullet for you? every time you end up on your own you end up dead, dying and ruined on your own hubris, on the cute idea that you’ve got this when really, you’ve always needed to be told what to do, to file in under someone else’s orders—minkowski’s, _kepler’s—_

and it’s bitter to say, tastes like vinegar and sounds like weakness, but there was something in the way kepler just expected to be obeyed (like it was owed to him, not like he’d earned it and had damn well better get it, not like—), something that made it easier to do what you were told, slid off your back easier than it did minkowski’s or lovelace’s. but then again, they weren’t _there_ at first, right after the shuttle and the cold and the crawl of ice across your hands, the way that kepler and jacobi and even maxwell were—you fit in on the urania (and you know now that was a lie, a clever act, but _god,_ did it feel _real,_ feel better than the cold war you’d just come from).

it's still easy to fall into even now sometimes, the way jacobi still looks at you and rolls his eyes when kepler goes from speaking to _drawling,_ the way maxwell had smiled when she asked if you were squatting in the mess, like so many times she’d come across you in the urania’s, staring out a window with nothing to do and convincing yourself you could see your star on the dark horizon—

and you have no _right,_ no stake in her memory like jacobi does, like hera—

you’re everything maxwell hated, even if she never said it to your face—podunk kid from a podunk town who spent more time staring out the window than at the chalkboard, who dug their nails into their only chance to get out, to get free, and swore _no one_ would ever overlook them again—“you’re too smart to be so hard on yourself,” you tell her once, and she stares at you like she’s looking in a mirror—  

it’s why the first time, when minkowski _almost_ killed her, that you couldn’t quite shake the guilt before you’d even done the deed, how you’d settled on _we don’t kill people_ (yet) instead of telling her there was something about freezing maxwell to death that felt a hell of a lot like lighting yourself on fire. and you’d never say it to her, never say it out _loud,_ but for a while it was nice to be around people who said they were in charge and could back it up, could act like it—

and then,

then there’s twenty pounds of C-4 under the floor of a room in engineering.

then there’s a barrel pointed right between your eyes.

then, captain lovelace is dead.

this was, of course, before you knew she could regenerate like an off-brand time lord but that's not the _point,_ is it, doug? the point is that you _let her,_ that you sat back and watched and let someone else step up, let someone else bite that bullet for you. the arc of kepler’s arm swinging from you to her had looked an awful lot like a cell door closing and you’re guilty all over again—guilty that you’re _not_ guilty, actually. she came _back_ so it’s fine, right? you shouldn’t have fought harder, yanked kepler’s attention back, made a challenge for him, a fight, a united front—because isn't that what you are, now? you're so much more alike than you had ever dared to think was possible; deep space transmissions and alien contact are all fun and games until they've got a direct line into the very heart of you, until your pulse pounds to the beat of the star that got you into this mess in the first place.

and honestly, how do you know you're still you? still human? cryo plays for keeps and maybe one of those times it wasn't just the tundra you were waking up from, blinking more than frost from your eyelashes because death is so slick like that, so sly. it waved to you from the curb that first time, watched you turn head over heels in a cradle of steel and glass and your daughter's sobbing scream, crouched at the end of your tether on the hephaestus’ hull as the water closed over your mouth, tracked your shuttle across the hollow vastness of space and picked up the fingernails you scattered in your wake.

maybe you're not human anymore. hell, all the shit you've done, maybe you were a monster before you ever got up here. maybe now everyone can just see it better.

but! but it's okay! you can make up for it, for _you,_ you can actually do your job—keep your head down and do whatever you can, scan the stars, fix the ship, take inventory of your dwindling supplies in the mess, the store room, the—

in the—

take inventory in the urania’s—

you're not scared of your unfettered access to the urania's hold are you, doug? it's so organized it's almost beautiful, almost painful, and it just makes you want to fuck it up, to _get fucked up._ you stopped yourself that last time and you could do that again, couldn't you? you could put the bottle back, throw it out the airlock, ignore the cool roll of the flask against your palm, that's—that's fine, right?

right?

 

“now, isabel’s hit me and renee’s threatened me,” he tells you as you slink into the brig, flask in your fist, ignoring the way jacobi’s wide, wild eyes follow you across the room, “but this, doug? this is just cruel.”

you don't say anything, grit your teeth so hard your jaw aches—this is _incredibly_ stupid, an unbelievable risk that you're really truly going to be flayed alive for the moment hera notices where you are—and jacobi looks like he has two cents he's thinking about pitching in as you lurk by the door. kepler arches an eyebrow. “are you going to offer me a drink?”

there’s a dozen answers crawling up your throat and clammering behind your teeth _(yes, no, this is mine, this is for show, i don’t know what i’m doing here, i think i’ve made a mistake)_ and you shake your head instead, rattle them all back down your gullet and swallow hard for emphasis. jacobi’s still fucking _looking_ at you and you’ve never felt more alive, more alike—there’s a kind of reflection you can only see in a bottom of a bottle, or in the face of someone else who’s seen theirs, it’s not one you forget and now it’s watching you from the corner of the brig like your own personal chorus in this never-ending greek tragedy—  

“eiffel,” and he sounds like he did the first time, through the hiss of an airlock and the chattering of your teeth, like he’s trying to soothe you, to keep you from lashing out and he’s not _wrong._ your hands are cold and the air tastes a lot like cryo when it could taste so much more like something else, something better, and it’s all you can do not to lose your goddamn mind and isn’t that just so _funny?_ it’s the same bottle, too, you know without even looking, can tell from how easily the cap gives against your fingers that it’s been opened once already.

“i think,” you start, tapping a old-time beat on a nearly new bottle (the tune’s an old classic, you’ve played it so many times before, know it deeper even than the blood running through your veins these days because some things never change), “i think this is a mistake.”

_“i_ think,” he says like you asked him (but let’s be honest now, here, just between us—you’re still looking for someone to bite that bullet for you), “i think that you've had a long few weeks.”

“i—”

“hey, he’s not—”  

“i think you're scared, and tired, and very, very alone.” even here, even now, he still expects to be obeyed. _“i think,_ officer eiffel, that you should have that drink.”

the cap comes loose so easy.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from edgar allan poe's poem "lines on ale":
> 
> “fill with mingled cream and amber,/ I will drain that glass again./ such hilarious visions clamber/ through the chamber of my brain —/ quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies/ come to life and fade away;/ what care i how time advances?/ i am drinking ale today.”


End file.
